Seamus Heaney: The Poet and the Piper

Broadcast:

Saturday 1 May 2004 3:00PM

This program combines the voice of Seamus Heaney (one of Ireland's and the world's foremost poets) reading his own verse, with the music of Liam O'Flynn, acknowledged as a contemporary master of the Uilleann pipes.

Supporting Information

Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 and grew up on a small farm in County Derry in Northern Ireland. His first book of poetry, "Death of a Naturalist" was published in 1966. He is the author of such acclaimed collections as "North"(1979) and "The Haw Lantern" (1987) and has recorded versions of the classic Irish poem Sweeny Astray and the Beowulf saga. Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995.

Seamus Heaney reads a selection of some of his most famous poems as well as newer works, accompanied by Liam O'Flynn playing pipes, Rod McVey harmonium and Stephen Cooney guitar.